Starting your own mobile service is now as easy and free as creating a blog or a homepage. There’s no startup fee, no monthly fee and you don’t need any skills. You can start earning revenue with SMS services in just five minutes, without any technical skills. With Fortumo.

Estonian startup Fortumo is one of the most fascinating consumer innovations in the country. Something that our Nordic colleagues from ArcticStartup have recently also reported about. Fortumo works on a simple revenue sharing ideology, you just have to create services, promote them and earn revenue.

The company offers three categories of trial services, depending on how sophisticated they are. From SMS info (selling info via SMS) and SMS chat (adding a chat-box or advertisement column to your homepage, blog or portal) to SMS services that require programming skills.

There are also community services available, such as Pay for Video (uploading your video to YouTube and selling it via SMS) and SMS chat for Facebook. Fortumo promises that there’ll be more community services coming soon.

One of the clients of Fortumo is MTV Estonia. They use SMS services in the programs and webpage to choose songs or win tickets in competitions.

The marketing director of Fortumo, Martin Koppel says that the most popular services created are the so-called dynamic services, the ones requiring some programming skills. That goes for The Baltics and Nordic countries, but not for China, where smaller web entrepreneurs and bloggers use the simplest Fortumo SMS service platforms: SMS chat, SMS campaigns or SMS info. The Estonian company claims to have more than 1500 clients in China.

Fortumo takes commission of the revenues earned by all the services created using their platforms. Fortumo takes 2-3% of the end-user price depending on country, type of service and volume. In essence, the customer payout rates range from 30-60% of the end user price after the tax, depending on the country and service type.

Fortumo is currently available in the fastest growing mobile service market China, but also the Nordic countries and The Baltics. Currently Fortumo claims to have altogether more than 6500 clients who have created over 27000 SMS services in 8 countries. The company aims to start providing services in three new countries during upcoming weeks: Bulgaria, Rumenia and Serbia, plus continue expanding in Europe, Asia and to North America.

Fortumo is a subsidiary of Mobi Solutions, the mobile service leader in Estonia.